Birdseye view of McGuire's Resort from the late 50's. Curly McGuire had a vision that golf would someday be a staple of Michigan tourism. Today Michigan has more public, daily feees golf courses than any other state in the Union.

When golf pros were greens keepers, carts resembled wheelbarrows and McGuire’s and Gull Lake represented resort golf in Michigan.

By Don VanderVeen
Senior Writer

Imagine turning back the clock of time to the early 1960s and loading up the clubs in the back of a Cadillac with wings, a pre-classic ’57 Chevy or a tightly packed Nash Rambler for an overnight stay at a golf resort.

It was a time when you could put a “Tiger in your tank” and woods were actually made out of wood. Persimmon drivers were state of the art and “Big Bertha” was the nickname for the lunch lady at school.

Arnie’s legend was growing, Jack was still a chubby kid and Gary was becoming a great Player. The entire PGA Tour was comprised of golfers who now can only be seen playing on the Champions Tour.

“ Stay and Play” was not yet a buzzword for the combination of lodging and golf.

For most, stay and play was not really an option. Unlike today, there were only a handful of resorts that offered both golf and overnight lodging accommodations in the early 1960s. Private clubs offered many amenities to its high-priced patrons, but the public golfer had to resort to what was available.

While the offerings in Michigan were somewhat limited, the era represented the beginnings of stay-and-play golf as it is now known and embraced in Michigan. The places that did offer stay-and-play packages provided a mixture of golf, sun and fun, overnight lodging and good food to go with it.

It was a time when the family ownerships at Gull Lake and McGuire’s began making their niches on Michigan’s golf landscape as places that provided golf to the public during the daytime followed by overnight lodging.

“Forty-five years ago, our golf operation was very, very simple,” said Jim McGuire, the second of three generations of management at McGuire’s Resort in Cadillac. “The golf pro did everything. With only nine holes, he was also the greens keeper.

“ A lot of courses had their pro as their greens keeper. As we expanded our bookings, our tee times were a major problem. Then we’d add more rooms and that would put more pressure on tee times.”

Golf carts, if available, had only three wheels. A 59 had not yet been carded in a professional round of golf and seemed about as improbable as man walking on the moon.

“ Our first carts were three-wheeled Vikings with a tiller,” Gull Lake View’s Jim Scott recalls. “When we first opened, we were more of a local golf business with a little bit of traveling golfer.

“ When we got into lodging, we chose to target either corporate or the recreational golfer. Now, we’ve had groups coming here as long as 35 years on the same weekend every year. There is a lot going on with the golf, the lake and water sports, and Kalamazoo is not far away.”

Unlike today, driving three or four hours for a golf excursion was a major trip or vacation and families packed their cars for the long haul.

“ It used to be that families left home or skipped work on Friday and would come in and play nine holes Friday and Saturday,” Jim McGuire said. “They were not going on to other destinations. Their outing was two or three days of fun and golfing at our resort.”

This 1970s overhead view of McGuire's shows the renovation of the main lodge and new restaurant on the building to the far right, with addition of bunkering to several of the original golf holes and the expansion to 27 holes of golf.

McGuire’s opened its first nine holes for play in 1961. It became an 18-hole golf course in 1971.

“We were one of the early (resorts) as far as packaging golf and lodging,” McGuire said. “Everyone wanted to have a package. We’ve altered the packages over the years to include 18 holes a day or as many holes as you can get in during a day.”

At Gull Lake, Scott grew up in the golf and lodging business. His father, Darl, started building Gull Lake’s West Course in the late 1950s. The first nine holes were opened in 1963 -- two years after the Gull Lake Motel was built -- and the allure of combining golf with the overnight stay caught on.

“People started coming in for the weekend to stay and go to the famous (Gull Harbor Inn) restaurant that was here, and playing golf was sort of a bi-product of their stay,” Jim Scott said. “A group would come and play golf and stay for the big dinner on Saturday night, and nobody thought much about it. But business grew from that.”

Gull Lake opened a second nine holes and clubhouse in 1965, and the stay-and-play business was in full swing. The location – halfway between Detroit and Chicago – was alluring.

At the time, Garland was still being carved out of farmlands and wetlands and did not yet offer lodging. Resorts that were already making tracks during ski season in Michigan’s Winter Wonderland – such as Otsego Club and Boyne – were exploring the golf industry as a way to keep their business going all year long.

Hopping in the car to drive four or five hours to play a round of golf seemed to be as unfathomable as a mere mortal hitting a golf ball 300 yards.

“ When you look back at it, we were probably one of the first stand alone golf course destinations in the state,” Scott said. “There were other resorts that eventually built golf courses as a supplement to their ski businesses.”

Over the next 20 years, other resorts – at Boyne, Grand Traverse, and Crystal Mountain, among others – built golf courses to complement their outstanding lodging and ski facilit.

Otsego Club introduced golf to its ski and lodging operations in the 1950s with a course designed by William Diddle, who was one of the premier architects of his era. But the resort remained private and for members only until it opened for public play in the mid-1980s. Around the same time, Garland – under the direction of Ron Otto -- became a major player in the stay-and-play industry with its cabin lodges and multiple golf courses on site.

Along with a big “G” located somewhere in the name, Gull Lake and McGuire’s share a common bond: they were lodging sites first and began their golf operations around the same time with nine-hole courses.

Those first nine-hole courses were built by family members at the respective sites and represented the beginning of stay-and-play resort golf in Michigan as it is now known.

Jim McGuire cleared land and helped build the first nine holes before designing the second nine holes, which opened 10 years later. The third nine opened in 1980.

“It wasn’t designed that way, but we opened a new nine every 10 years,” Jim McGuire said. “The original nine holes did well, but after a while people got tired of playing the same nine holes.”

Like his neighbor to the north, Scott helped accommodate the growth at Gull Lake View with his labor and design work on the Gull Lake West and Gull Lake East courses. The East Course was added in the early 1970s. It was funded, in part, by selling off the Gull Lake Motel at the corner. With two 18-hole courses and only one small hotel at the corner, housing villas were added. The 64 Fairway Villas all feature four beds, kitchen and a common room in the middle. Gull Lake View has since grown to a five-course property and reigns as Southwest Michigan’s largest standalone resort.

“ It was pretty much in response to our market,” Scott said. “By today’s standards, our golf courses are really short, but they are fun courses for the average players because they can score on them. The nice thing about our five courses is that they are all a little bit different with their own characteristics. They are not just cookie cutter designs.

“It is perfect for a golf group.”

Those original stay-and-play resorts have survived and thrived during the test of time as other multi-faceted facilities and world-class golf courses have turned the state into a golfer’s paradise.

“ There was a perception 10 years ago that the average golfer would be willing to pay $100 for a round of golf, and courses were built with that in mind,” Jim McGuire said. “We now have a lot of exceptional golf courses, but the economy is to the point where it is difficult to support them financially.

“ The one thing we can really do at our resort is to make sure that we exceed everyone’s expectations while they are here. That’s hard to do today, because everybody has very high expectations and people are very particular and want everything just right. We bend over backwards to make it right and enjoyable.”

McGuire’s and Gull Lake View have remained family owned during their various phases of expansion, renovation and innovation. That family owned tradition has emerged as a key for success in Michigan’s stay-and-play golf industry. Like the two fore-runners, many of the state’s major resorts – including Crystal Mountain, Boyne and Garland -- have had successive generations running the operations.

“ I think by having it in the family – and the same is probably true with some of the other resorts in Michigan – you have that continuity and long range vision that is followed through,” Scott said. “The customers who come back year after year like to see a lot of familiar faces.

“ Some of the courses that have been through a lot of owners still have a learning curve with their new owners. A family owned business just has more consistency and the experience people depend on year after year.”